Bjorn Lomberg et al
2.0 out of 5 stars It just gets better and better!, November 15, 2013
By David Wineberg “David Wineberg” (New York, NY USA) – See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)
Milton Berle once appeared for an interview on a morning TV show in New York. After, his interviewer threw to the weather woman. Berle left his seat and took over doing the weather. His analysis? A line of tornados ripped through New Jersey last night, causing $100 million in IMPROVEMENTS. That is the feeling I got with How Much Have Global Problems Cost the World?
Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus got a bunch of academics to look at issues from a common denominator. Everything has to be evaluated as a percentage of GDP. Everything has to be monetized to make the models work. Lives, disease, biodiversity – everything gets a dollar value in these studies. Lack of historical data is not a problem either; the models “backcast” to 1900. The conclusion is that our worrisome problems are an ever shrinking cost to us, relative to GDP.
But of course, prices have never reflected the ecological cost of production or use, so we've been freeloading, with GDP expanding while costs have been controlled. The bill will go to our grandchildren. These models don't reflect that. Instead, the ballooning GDPs of the last century simply leave the cost centers in their wake, taking an ever smaller share.
